


the things that torment most

by renecdote



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Books as a coping mechanism, Buck needs a hug, Crying, Feelings Realisation, Fluff, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Insecurity, Love Confessions, M/M, Minor Angst, References to anxiety, Season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 01:42:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29910225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renecdote/pseuds/renecdote
Summary: Eddie makes himself comfortable at the other end of the couch, lifting Buck’s legs and putting them back down in his lap. His hand rests on Buck’s uninjured ankle, not caressing but sort of holding, touch achingly gentle.“You should try audiobooks,” he says. “Or maybe podcasts. Chris has been downloading them on my phone, some of them are pretty interesting.”“Sure,” Buck agrees sleepily. His leg doesn’t hurt so much anymore and he kind of wants to go for a run, hit his training goal for the day, but he’s warm and comfortable and it’s nice to just be here with Eddie. To just exist, without having to worry about what comes next.In which Buck reads a lot and all roads lead to him figuring out he's in love with his best friend.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Comments: 46
Kudos: 561





	the things that torment most

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the prompt 'books'. It was supposed to be short but it spiralled wildly out of control I don't know what happened.
> 
> Title inspired by this quote from James Baldwin: _You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive._

The books pile up.

Buck reads Jim Abbott’s autobiography while he’s still in hospital, recovering from the second surgery. It’s interesting. Inspiring, even. It makes him feel like his dreams are still in reach, even with four broken bones and half a dozen pieces of metal in his leg. They just… aren’t in reach just yet.

With nothing else to do, Buck keeps reading. He reads a book about Jack the Ripper, then one about the Golden State Killer. YouTube is a warren of true crime videos and he loses himself down the rabbit hole. He gets in the habit of messaging Eddie at all hours of the night with comments and theories and Eddie gets in the habit of telling to go the fuck to sleep, _seriously Buck, it’s three a.m., aren’t you supposed to be resting?_

One night Eddie’s response is more to the tune of _some of us have work in the morning_ and even though Buck knows he isn’t trying to be mean, the words sting. He resolves not to text Eddie in the middle of the night anymore. And it’s a resolve that lasts for five days—until Eddie messages him just before two one morning and asks if he’s awake.

“Bad call,” he says when Buck calls. His tone makes it clear that he doesn’t want to talk about it. “Tell me about what you’re reading?”

So Buck talks and Eddie doesn’t really ask questions, but he listens, making comments every now and then so that Buck knows he’s still there. The time on Buck’s phone says it’s been well over an hour when he realises Eddie’s comments have stopped, that his breathing is deep and even, asleep with the line still open. Buck waits another ten minutes, just to be sure, before he hangs up.

When he wakes up in the morning, he finds a single text from Eddie: _thank you_.

When his doctor clears him to start training for his LAFD recertification test, the stack of books stagnates because there isn’t as much time to read. Buck fixes his sleep schedule (mostly) and on nights when his thoughts get too loud and sleep won’t come, he goes running instead of picking up a book. On days when the jolts of pain shooting through his leg are too much for that, he goes swimming instead. The gym at the end of his block has a pool open twenty-four hours and Buck swims laps until his chest is burning and his muscles are trembling; until his brain is quiet and he’s exhausted enough to sleep without dreaming.

“You look tired,” Eddie says when he stops by after one of those nights. “Are you still not sleeping?”

Buck is lying on the couch with a heating pad on his leg, a pillow squashed behind his head, and reruns of The Great British Bakeoff playing on TV. He’s half watching, half dozing, half scrolling through wikipedia. He just wanted to know what coulis was and now he’s deep in the history of food preserving.

“I sleep fine,” he tells Eddie, and it’s only sort of a lie. Most nights he does.

Eddie makes himself comfortable at the other end of the couch, lifting Buck’s legs and putting them back down in his lap. His hand rests on Buck’s uninjured ankle, not caressing but sort of holding, touch achingly gentle.

“You should try audiobooks,” he says. “Or maybe podcasts. Chris has been downloading them on my phone, some of them are pretty interesting.”

“Sure,” Buck agrees sleepily. His leg doesn’t hurt so much anymore and he kind of wants to go for a run, hit his training goal for the day, but he’s warm and comfortable and it’s nice to just be here with Eddie. To just exist, without having to worry about what comes next.

On the TV, the judges are criticising a woman’s citrus cake.

“Did she put flowers in it?” Eddie asks, tone laced with disgust.

There is a long history of edible flowers, for both medicinal and culinary purposes. Buck can’t remember where he learnt about that. It might have been the Food Network, or maybe something Bobby told him. He loves learning things, he always has. And he loves sharing the things he has learnt, teaching someone something they didn’t know, making them smile with a fun fact.

When Buck tells Eddie that people in Victorian England candied Violets to decorate cakes, he watches the scrunch of his nose in bewilderment, the amused disbelief, the relaxed, almost fond, expression on his face as Buck talks. And for a moment, it feels like nothing else matters.

After the tsunami, the pile of books grows taller again. Buck reads _Wave_ , then _Hiroshima_ , then _Krakatoa_ , then _The Perfect Storm_. He’s exhausted during the day and wide awake at night, reading everything he can find about natural disasters until his eyes burn and his head throbs. He still runs some evenings, but he doesn’t swim.

Maddie worries about him and Eddie worries about Christopher and Buck tries to pretend there is nothing to worry about at all. Looking after Christopher during the day helps. He buys children’s books and colouring books, pencils and paints and Lego sets, child-friendly video games and DVDs. He masters cooking pancakes, then mac and cheese, then finds a cookbook Bobby gave him for Christmas two years ago and tries something healthy.

“Buck,” Christopher says one morning. “Do you know what a supernova is?”

It leads them down a rabbit hole about space. They find YouTube videos and podcast episodes and a few Nat Geo kids articles that aren’t too densely scientific.

Buck texts Eddie: _Did you know only one person in human history has been hit by a meteorite?_

_Also the moon is moving further away every year isn’t that sad :(_

The 118 must be between calls because it doesn’t take long for Eddie to reply. He always listens to Buck’s rambling, is always happy to know more, and it isn’t long before they’re on a FaceTime call, Christopher sitting in Buck’s lap so they both fit into the camera view, Buck smiling down at him while Chris recounts everything they’ve learnt for his dad. He glances up, catching Eddie’s eye, and sees the same fond look reflected on his face. It makes Buck’s heart throb, makes his breath catch in his chest, makes him think _I want this all the time. I want **them** all the time._

Buck has been back at work almost a month when a bad storm hits LA. Thunder and lightning, torrential rain, gale force winds, power lines down throughout the city. It blows through in a couple of hours but leaves weeks worth of cleanup in its wake. Most of the calls come in after the storm has passed, keeping them out late into the night. Buck is still buzzing with energy when they return to the station and he lies awake in the bunks reading about California hurricanes. They rarely hit directly and only seven tropical cyclones since 1850 have caused gale-force winds in the Southwest region of the United States, but that’s twice as many as tsunamis. The frequency and severity of storms in California has been increasing in recent years, too, which is the opposite of reassuring.

“Hey,” Buck says the next morning, when the whole team is gathered around the table for breakfast. “Did you guys know that men are five times more likely to be hit by lightning than women? One guy from Virginia has been hit seven times.”

“Why do you know that?” Chimney asks, bewildered. “Are you expecting us all to get hit by lightning one day?”

“The odds of that happening are about one in a million,” Bobby reassures them.

Hen snorts. “Maybe slightly higher for all of you.”

The conversation moves on, but Buck can’t stop thinking about it. Statistically, the odds of surviving a natural disaster are higher than the odds of being caught in one in the first place, but they’re not absolute. Maddie tells him it’s not healthy, obsessing over what might happen, tying himself into knots about things that he’ll probably never experience again.

“I’m not obsessing,” Buck tells her. “I just—I want to know more.”

_I want to be prepared._

_I want to know why I survived and so many people didn’t._

The hardest thing about surviving a natural disaster isn’t the surviving bit; it’s moving forward afterwards. Buck has read enough books to know that. And he’s trying. He is. He’s just—not sure what he’s moving forward to.

Christopher gets hurt at school and Buck tells Eddie about Jim Abbott’s book. It feels good, using something that inspired him to inspire someone else. He and Eddie spend hours watching YouTube tutorials so they can build Chris a CP friendly skateboard, and the look on the kid’s face when they push him through the park—Buck wants to bottle it, hold that happiness close to his chest and remember it always.

He’s over at the Diaz house for dinner a week later. They play video games and eat their weight in pizza and Buck feels so happy it hurts. There are glow in the dark stars on Christopher’s bedroom ceiling—a result of the kindled interest in space—and Buck sits on the floor and stares up at them, listening while Eddie reads a bedtime story. He doesn’t want the moment to end, but of course it has to. Eddie holds out a hand and Buck takes it to pull himself to his feet, overbalancing a little, stumbling into Eddie. Eddie catches him easily, like it doesn’t even require thought, smiling as he leads the way out to the living room. Buck sits on the couch, feeling strangely unsure of himself, waiting while Eddie disappears to get them a couple of beers.

He is surprised when Eddie comes back with not only the beers, but a book. A hardback, shiny and new, the sticky residue of a price sticker still visible on the cover when he hands it over.

“I thought you might like some new reading material.”

“ _At Risk_?” Buck asks, reading from the title. Curious, he flips the book over to read the blurb.

Eddie shrugs. There’s something almost nervous about the way he moves his hands, like he doesn’t quite know what to do with them. “It’s about the social side of natural disasters? The sales person recommended it, I was sure...”

“It sounds interesting,” Buck assures him. “But I don’t understand—you didn’t have to buy me a book.”

“I wanted to say thank you. For your help with the skateboard last week and—everything else. Everything you do for us.”

Buck’s throat feels right. “You don’t have to thank me. I’d do anything for Christopher, you know that.”

“I do.”

The way Eddie is looking at him, it feels—important. Big, in a tingling, nervous kind of way. There is a quiet confidence in Eddie’s voice, a smile at the edge of his mouth, an unwavering belief in—Buck? Them?

 _I don’t deserve you_ , Buck thinks. It’s a snaking thought, only out-shadowed by the more painful _but God I want you_.

He clears his throat, turning back to the book, flipping randomly through it just for something to do.

“Maddie thinks it’s unhealthy,” he finds himself saying. “My obsession with natural disasters.”

“It’s not unhealthy,” Eddie says immediately. Then he falters, stumbling as he goes on, “Unless—it’s not making things worse, right? You’re not—I mean, you’d tell me if you were struggling, right? You’d talk to me?”

They’ve already been through the not-talking-to-each-other thing and it was a disaster on both ends. Buck never wants to put that distance between them again.

“I’d tell you,” he agrees. “I do think it helps, reading about it, understanding why these things happen and how people pick themselves up afterwards... It makes me feel less alone, I guess.”

He immediately wants to take the words back. Not because he doesn’t mean them, but because he does, and the look on Eddie’s face makes him wish that he didn’t.

“You’re not alone, Buck,” he says, quiet in his sincerity. He sits down, close enough that their knees touch when he turns so that they’re facing each other. His hand twitches, an aborted movement to reach out, grip tightening on the beer bottles he’s still holding instead. His eyes search Buck’s face, wide with worry, as he adds, “You know that, right? You’ve got Maddie, the 118, me and Chris.”

Buck looks away, blinking to try and clear the tears that are welling up. He doesn’t want to cry. It’s so stupid. Eddie gave him a book and said a few nice things and Buck was maybe a bit too honest and now Eddie is worried and Buck doesn’t know what to do with that, except cry, apparently, because he’s a fucking mess and—

“Hey.”

Eddie does reach out this time, beers cast aside so he can put a hand on Buck’s shoulder. It’s almost exactly the same as that day after the tsunami, when he told Buck there was no one he trusted more with his son. A tear breaks free and slides down Buck’s cheek and he quickly dashes it away.

Eddie looks uncertain, but determined, like all he wants in life to fix Buck—to help him fix himself. “Is this just about the tsunami, or...?”

Buck shrugs, feeling small and helpless. He picks up one of the beer bottles, just for something to do, but he doesn’t open it, just picks at the label, keeping his hands busy. Eddie takes his silence for the answer it is.

“Okay,” he murmurs. “Why don’t you stay here tonight? We can go out for breakfast in the morning, maybe even take Christopher to the observatory? He’s been begging me to go and I know he’ll be thrilled if you come too.”

Buck hesitates. He doesn’t want to impose. He doesn’t want Eddie’s pity—although even as he thinks it, he knows that isn’t what this is.

“I want you to stay,” Eddie tells him, and Buck knows that he means it.

“Okay,” he agrees. “I’ll stay.”

And that voice in the back of his whispers _forever, if you’ll have me_.

Three weeks later, Eddie almost dies and Buck—Buck loses his shit. Bobby has to pull him away from clawing at the ground, screaming Eddie’s name, out of his mind with panic and the first stirrings of what he refuses to call grief. Eddie isn’t dead—Eddie _can’t_ be dead.

And he isn’t. He’s hypothermic and half-drowned, but he gets himself out and they get him to a hospital and Buck only has a minor breakdown about it. Bobby drives him home from the hospital and cooks pasta that Buck has no appetite for, hovering in that worried dad way he does. When Buck tells him he can go, that he’s tired, he just wants to sleep, it’s clear that Bobby doesn’t want to leave him alone.

“Do you want me to call Maddie?” he asks. “I’m sure she’d be happy to come over.”

Buck shakes his head. He has already fielded multiple worried text messages from his sister; he’s not sure he has the energy to do it in person too. Besides, the only person he wants is Eddie—who, coincidentally, is the only person he can’t have.

“I’ll be fine,” he tells Bobby. “I know I kinda freaked out, and it was unprofessional, and…”

“You thought your best friend was dead.” Bobby’s voice is understanding. “I don’t blame you for your reaction, Buck.”

Buck can’t look him in the eye. He can’t say _yeah, my best friend, that’s all he is_. From the way Bobby looks at him for a long moment, he figures he doesn’t have to.

“I’m going to pick Christopher up in the morning,” he says instead. “Take him to visit Eddie before work. Shift starts at twelve, right?”

Bobby looks like he wants to say something more, but in the end he just nods. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

Despite the fatigue pressing in on him, Buck lies awake for a long time that night. He tosses and turns, tries reading and watching a movie and listening to music, but nothing works. His mind won’t stop spinning, replaying the moment the drilling rig collapsed over and over, the way his heart split open, the crushing relief when he heard Eddie’s voice, finally felt him alive—cold and wet but _alive_ —in his hands. Sleep isn’t going to happen, so Buck gives up and opens his phone. He googles: _how long can a person survive underwater_. Then he immediately closes that and googles instead: _how do I tell my best friend I’m in love with him_.

The answer comes to him in a book. Not a book about love, or relationships, or anything like that. It’s one of the books he bought for Christopher. Buck is putting it back on the bookshelf when a piece of paper falls out from between the colourful pages. When he opens it, curious, be finds a drawing. There is a stick figure that is unmistakably Buck, one with dark hair that must be Eddie, and a curly haired kid in the middle that can only be Christopher. The three of them are holding hands, big grins on their faces, and in childish handwriting above, Chris has written _My Family_. Buck’s breath catches, heart thudding painfully in his chest.

He doesn’t know what to do. Does he put it back in the book? Does he give it back to Christopher? Does he give it to Eddie?

Does he keep it?

He wants to keep it. He wants to frame it or hang it on the fridge or tuck it into the box with all his other precious keepsakes, there to pull out whenever he needs the reminder.

(Which feels like all the time, these days.)

It’s been a rough week. Eddie has recovered from the well, he’s back at work, and Buck hasn’t found the courage to confess his feelings yet, but things have been fine—good, even. Until last Friday, when he went out to the bar to celebrate alone and met Red, then promptly fucked things up with Red, then sort of fixed them just in time to watch the man die. The funeral was this morning. Maddie brought him back to his apartment afterwards and fussed for an hour and a half before Buck finally convinced her to go home.

He told her he was fine.

It might have been a lie.

He’s still sitting on the floor in front of the bookshelf when Eddie comes in. He doesn’t knock, just uses his key, which means Buck doesn’t get any warning. He doesn’t get a chance to school his face or hide the drawing or—

“Buck?”

There is concern in Eddie’s voice and it’s only when Buck looks up and sees him through a film of tears that he realises he’s crying. He sniffs, ducking his head again to wipe away the tears.

“Sorry.” It comes out choked. “Sorry, I was—I didn’t know you were coming, I was just—”

Eddie kneels on the floor beside him, eyes flicking over him, like he’s making sure Buck isn’t hurt before he asks, “What’s wrong?”

Buck just shakes his head. He’s crying properly now and he’s a little alarmed to find that he can’t stop, no matter how many shuddering breaths he tries to take. It’s not really sobbing, it’s too quiet for that, but the tears are rolling quickly down his cheeks and dripping onto the drawing in his hands and they just… won’t stop. He held it together at the funeral this morning, even when he looked around and saw all the empty chairs, so he thought he’d be fine but now it’s just—too much.

Eddie takes in the tears and the drawing still gripped in Buck’s hand and the worry on his face breaks into something more like heartache. “Come on,” he murmurs, taking Buck’s arm. “Let’s get off the floor, yeah? This can’t be good for you leg.”

Because it’s Eddie and of course he knows that Buck’s leg still hurts sometimes, even after having all the screws removed, even though he tries to hide it. The first thing Eddie does when he helps Buck to his feet is pull him into a hug. Buck is helpless to do anything but sink into it. He loves hugging Eddie. He doesn’t have to bend down as much, the way he does with most people, and Eddie hugs with his whole body, arms warm and strong, cheek pressed against the side of Buck’s head. He even rubs his back a bit, which is exactly as calming as it should be.

Eddie holds on until Buck is ready to let go, tears calmed to the occasional hitch in his breathing. When Buck steps back, he looks him over with that same assessing gaze from before. Buck’s face feels hot, his eyes swollen, achy in that post-crying way where even his lashes hurt. He grimaces when he sees the mess he has made of Eddie’s shirt.

“Sorry.”

Eddie shakes his head, dismissing the concern with ease. “I’ve got a kid, Buck. This is definitely not the first time I’ve been cried on.”

Buck doesn’t have the energy for the smile Eddie is probably aiming to get, which just makes Eddie’s frown get more concerned.

“Go sit on the couch,” he says. “I’ll get you some water.”

“I can—”

“I know.” Eddie’s voice is gentle. “Go sit down anyway.”

Buck sits. There are tissues on the coffee table so he grabs a few and wipes away the evidence of tears while he waits. He’s still holding Christopher’s drawing. It’s a little wrinkled from being crushed against Eddie’s back during the hug, so Buck straightens it, trying to smooth the creases out. He still feels like crying, but it’s a vague, distant kind of feeling. Everything feels distant, actually, like Buck is just drifting, somehow heavy and hollow all at once. Whoever said crying makes you feel better was clearly full of shit.

The touch of a cold glass against his skin startles him, draws him out of his head and back into the swirling worry of Eddie’s eyes. Buck wraps his fingers around the glass of water, not realising how thirsty he is until he’s drinking it. He finishes it and Eddie goes back to the kitchen to fill it up again, wordless, and when he comes back he sits down, so close that their arms brush when Eddie reaches out to trace the edge of Christopher’s artwork.

“I haven’t seen this one,” he comments, smiling at the drawing. “He’s right though.” And he looks at Buck then, as serious as he was all those weeks ago when they did this in his living room. “You are our family.”

It should be reassuring, hearing those words out of Eddie’s mouth, but Buck still struggles to believe them. Eddie wouldn’t lie to him, he knows that, especially not about something like this. But Maddie used to tell him they were a united front all the time, Buckley siblings against the world, always there for each other, and even she left. They may call him family now, but everyone leaves eventually.

Either Eddie knows him so well that he knows what is going through Buck’s head, or the thoughts are painted clearly across his face, because he keeps talking. “What you said in the station the other day, about getting left behind… That’s never going to happen, Buck.”

“Red—”

“I’m not talking about Red,” Eddie cuts in. “I’m not talking about the 118. I’m talking about _us_. You and me and Christopher. I know you think that you chose us and that we might get sick of you one day, but that’s not going to happen. _We chose you too._ Family works both ways, and me and Chris—we want you to be a part of ours.”

“I love you.” The words tumble out, unwilling, unplanned, and Buck looks away, unable to face Eddie. He can’t go back, can’t make the words disappear, can’t bear to have their meaning misconstrued, so he keeps going, tripping over himself as he tries to explain. “I think I’m _in love_ with you. For—for a while now, only I didn’t figure it out properly until—until you almost died, Eddie, and I—I can’t lose you, okay? I don’t know what I would do without you.”

He risks a look at Eddie, expecting shock and disbelief and maybe cold politeness. Definitely rejection. But there is none of that—no shock or disbelief of cold politeness, and instead of rejecting him Eddie says—

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He doesn’t sound angry. He sounds—hurt, maybe. Buck looks down at his hands, swallowing against the burn of more tears. “I didn’t know how.” There is the briefest of pauses before he adds, “You don’t have to say anything. I just… You should know. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.” He stands up, jittery, unable to bear the rejection that he’s still not sure isn’t coming. “You can go. I understand if—if you need some space, if you feel differently now—“

Eddie stands with him. He grabs Buck arm and forces him to turn, to look at him. “Buck,” he says, sounding almost desperate. “Stop. Let me just—“

“It’s fine,” Buck interrupts, heading him off. He tries to pull his arm away and he’s not sure whether he’s more hurt or relieved when Eddie lets him go. “You don’t have to explain anything.”

“Buck—”

“I know you probably don’t feel the same and that’s fine, I just—”

“Dammit, Buck,” Eddie snaps, frustrated. “Will you just shut up and listen to me?”

Buck is so startled he stops, frozen in the middle of his apartment.

“I don’t want to leave—and I don’t want you to leave either,” Eddie tells him. He pauses, taking a visible breath, almost guilty when he says, “I already know you’re in love with me.”

The earth literally opening up in front of them would be a lesser shock. Buck feels off-balance, like he’s being tossed about by a wave in the middle of his living room. He almost doesn’t recognise his own voice when he says, “You do?”

Eddie nods. He looks—nervous? Uncertain?

“The signs were kind of obvious, actually, after I realised I was in love with you.”

Buck is so caught up on _signs_ and _obvious_ that it takes him a little longer to realise Eddie said he’s in love with him too.

“Oh.” Buck frowns, confused. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was going to,” Eddie says. “When I gave you that book? I was trying to tell you, I just… didn’t know how. And then you were upset and it didn’t feel right. And I kept telling myself that if you really did feel the same, you’d tell me, but you never did, so… I don’t know, I guess I convinced myself it wasn’t true.”

“I was afraid,” Buck admits. “This year has been… kind of terrible, at times, but you—you make everything better. I was afraid of losing that—losing _you_ —so I never said anything and then—then you cut your line and that rig collapsed and I almost did lose you and—”

“You didn’t lose me.” Eddie’s voice is soft. He steps forward, takes Buck’s hand and tangles their fingers together, squeezing reassuringly. “You’re never going to lose me.”

Buck feels like he can’t breathe. Maybe this wasn’t the best time e to have this conversation because his emotions are all over the place and the entire week has been draining, honestly, but—Eddie is here. He came right when Buck needed him, showed up without even being asked, like he just knew. Buck has never had someone who knows him the way that Eddie does. He’s never had someone who wants him the way that Eddie does, completely and unapologetically, ready to shout it to the world if that’s what it takes to make Buck hear.

“It’s okay if you don’t believe me right now,” Eddie says. “I’ll just keep showing you, for as long as it takes.”

When Eddie kisses him, it feels less like starting a new chapter and more like turning the page and finding out you aren’t as close to the end as you thought.

A year later to the day, Eddie gives him another book. It’s wrapped in metallic blue paper, taped neatly and tied with a black bow, waiting on the table when Buck gets back from a run in the morning. He picks it up, delighted and curious, running his fingers over the smooth paper, turning it this way and that to see if he can guess what it is.

Eddie watches him from the kitchen doorway, smiling as he says, “Happy anniversary.”

“Happy anniversary.” Buck grins. “Can I—?”

One nod is all he needs to tear the paper open.

It’s a photo book. The glossy pages are filled with Eddie and Chris and the rest of their family, some of them clearly posed, but most of them candid. There is Christmas Day at the station; Christopher’s face covered in cake at Eddie’s birthday party; Buck and Chimney asleep together on the couches at the station; Buck and Eddie dancing, oblivious to the world around them; Maddie and Buck leaning against each other, laughing so hard they’re both crying; the whole crew gathered around the kitchen watching Bobby and Athena cook. Dozens of snapshots; dozens of moments of joy frozen in memory. Buck runs his fingers over the pages, smiling as he flips through the book.

“Everyone helped me collect the photos,” Eddie tells him. “And Christopher helped me choose which ones made the final cut. I would have used all of them, but they had a page limit, and—”

“It’s perfect,” Buck assures him. He steps over the bookshelf in the middle of their living room and sets it on top, right in the centre, pride of place. Eddie wraps his arms around him from behind and Buck leans back against him, holding his arms while they gaze at the book together.

“Perfect,” Eddie agrees softly—and Buck knows that he’s not just talking about the book.

He turns in Eddie’s arms so they can kiss, sweet and slow, like they’ve got all the time in the world. Nothing to do, nowhere to be except right here with each other.

The next time Eddie give Buck a book, it’s more of a magazine, and they read it together, poring over the pages and making notes, taking the first step in planning their wedding.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, thank you for reading. Kudos and comments are love 💛 And you can also find me on tumblr [here](https://renecdote.tumblr.com/).


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